Legal Immigrants....

We were back over at the Kennedy Space Center this week. The weather and wave conditions had finally combined to give us flat seas and clear skies. The bathymetry survey that we had tried to conduct 3 weeks ago, but had to scrub due to engine failure, was finally on.

I got to go because, at the same time, we were making adjustments to the dune monitoring camera that we had installed back in April. That April day when we installed the camera was the day the Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.

The bathy survey took three days. The boat crew left early on Tuesday and started the survey before we got there on Tuesday evening. Wednesday was camera work day. So we were back on the Eagle 4 tower on the north edge of the Space Center property. Thursday, I was on site with Kara, who was monitoring the GPS base station and serving as NASA Security contact and weather watcher. I was finishing camera adjustments and helping with the base station, which wasn't much. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go out on the boat.

Wednesday evening we had dinner with Jon, a marine biologist at NASA in charge of numerous projects on the Space Center. Jon made us an offer Kara and I could not refuse... There was a load of sea turtle eggs arriving the next morning. Refugees from the Gulf of Mexico. Would we like to see them unload the next boxes?

A little background: The northern Gulf of Mexico beaches are nesting grounds for several species of endangered sea turtles. As part of a joint effort by NASA, FWS, FL FWCC, NPS and FedEx, turtle nests are being moved from the oiled or threatened beaches to the Kennedy Space Center, where the turtles are being released after they hatch. 30 nests arrived Thursday... more then 700 nests will be rescued. Most are loggerhead nests, but they including leatherback, green, and Kemp Ridley turtle nests as well.

Jane Provancha is the lead biologist on the project. She told us that initially, they didn't know how successful the project would be. So everyone involved kept things quiet. If moving the nests was unsuccessful, there would have been a lot of criticism of the effort. The nests are excavated 45 days after they are laid. This gives the embryos time for critical development, including attaching to their shell, orienting themselves and for their sex to be determined, which is a function of the nest temperature early in incubation. After that 45 day period, the next is carefully excavated. Each egg must be individually lifted out and placed in the styrofoam nest box. Then they are covered with sand. If the egg is turned over, the embryo will detached from the shell and die. If the box was rotated too quickly when being moved, the torque could detach the embryo from the shell. If the egg is jostled too much, the embryo might try to hatch prematurely, and die. If the temp for the nest becomes too hot or too cool, and they would loose the whole nest. There were many, many factors that could endanger the survival of the hatchlings.

FedEx donated the time and trucks for this project. They use a special critical care vehicle, climate controlled and stabilized, with special racks inside to hold the nest boxes. Currently two shipments of nest boxes are arriving weekly. But this is just the beginning of the hatching season. Soon they will be getting 3 to 4 shipments a week and in August they may get them 7 days a week.

The next boxes are begin kept in an old, previously unused, building on the Space Center grounds. The building is kept at 80-89°F. No pictures are allow for security reasons, and to not disturb the hatchlings. These photos are from NASA's website. My shutter finger was twitching the whole time, but I was good and didn't even get my camera out. Then someone handed me a NASA camera and I went to town, not that I could keep any of the shots. There is more information on the project click here.

When we got there, one of the tech showed us two boxes from a nest that had been rescued. During that night the eggs had hatched. Resting quietly in there temporary home where about 2 dozen three-inch long hatchlings. They had emerged from their shells, burrowed out of the sand were waiting for their chance to make a break for the ocean... which would require some help from the staff. They were covered with a black cloth to keep them quiet. Later that night they would be released somewhere on the Space Center's 100 miles of natural beaches, where other turtles lay their own nests every year. Wednesday night the staff had released 120 hatchlings.

I asked Jane what their survival rate was. In nature, 15-20% of a nest's hatchlings might survive to get to the water. Fewer then that survive to adulthood. These nest boxes are hatching at a rate of 85-95% survival.

No one is sure what will happen to these turtles. Like salmon, a sea turtle will return to the beach it was born on. These little guys were laid on a Gulf beach, born in a box, and will be released into the Atlantic. Jane couldn't tell us if they would someday return to the beaches of the Space Center, or somehow make their way back to the beaches in the Gulf. Researchers think that turtles imprint the magnetic signature of the beach where they originate from, but no one knows when that happens. Did they imprint the Gulf of Mexico, or will they imprint the Space Center? They aren't doing anything to track these turtles. They are simply being released when they hatch, with well wishes and hopes for a long life. No one knows if they will return to the Space Center to lay their eggs.

Maybe this year more of the hatchlings will survive to adulthood, because more of them made it to the water. Their chances of survival in the Gulf this year were estimated to be near zero. Thanks to the dedication of the biologists at NASA, FWS, FWCC, and NPS, as well as Fedex, all those hatchlings will make it to the water, clean water next to oil free beaches. After that, they are on their own. But at least this year, these little guys will have a fighting chance...



For More Information Visit...
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/news/turtles.html
For more pictures...
http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/search.cfm?cat=27

The Joys of Home Ownership...

We've been dealing with a leaky side door to the garage, pretty much since we moved into the house. The first door frame and door itself, for us at least, pretty much rotted out a few years after we moved in. So, when we replaced the front door, we had the side door replaced at the same time. Several years after that we noticed the frame at the bottom of the door was soft. It, too, had rotted out. We had that repaired, and hoped we'd fixed the problem. In September of 2008, we had the door replaced again, not because of a problem, although it, too, had leaked, but to make it hurricane rated. Once again we struggled with a leaky door. We caulked it, we painted it, we sealed it to within an inch of it's life. To no avail. After all the rain we had last week, we noticed again that the door was leaking. So we started looking again for a cause. Again.

Let me back up about 10 months, to a day after another particularly heavy rain and standing water inside the door. We started inspecting it and we discovered that there is no caulking behind the hinges. The door opens out, so the hinges are on the outside, in the elements. It probably opens out because of some building code requiring it to do so. All the side garage doors in the neighborhood do. Being that the bottom hinge is only 18 inches off the ground and gets wet during heavy rain from the south, and water was running behind the hinge, and into the door frame. We caulked behind all the hinges, and hoped that we had caught it in time. All we probably did was seal in the moisture, and seal the fate of the door frame.

Thursday, Edward started looking at the door again, trying to find where it was leaking. Again the bottom of the frame was soft, so he got out the box cutter and started pealing old caulk, which pulled off the paint, and revealed wet, rotten wood. The bottom 12 inches of the door frame, on both sides, was completely rotted out. Again. It wasn't like we'd been ignoring the problem. We'd caulked, we'd sealed, we'd painted. Everything would seem to be fine. We'd even get that south rain again and it would be dry, but maybe it just wasn't leaking enough to show.

We called the handyman that had done the work for us. Could he please come out and have a look? It was going to need repair and fast. One, we had a break in the weather. After a week of rain, we weren't supposed to get any for a few days. Two, I'm supposed to go out of town next week. I like to be here when we have work done on the house. Edward and I tag team the people we hire to make sure they know we're watching and do the work right. That is the theory at least.

Our handyman came out the next morning and looked at the door frame. Yeah, it needed to be done and he thought he could do it that afternoon. Great. How about doing the work free of charge? He'd always said he stood by his work. OK, here's his chance to prove it. We told him that we'd found no caulk behind the hinges. He gave us a some an dance about needing a gutter to keep the rain from splashing onto the door. Or maybe, I thought, if the hinge had been sealed correctly, it wouldn't have leaked and rotted. None-the-less, if it had been done right, it wouldn't have rotted in less then 2 years. He agreed to do the work at no charge. I figure he thought the same thing.

He had another job that morning, but returned at about 4:00 to do the work. It took about 2 hours. He had to cut out the bad wood, high enough to reach wood that was still good. Then he had to fit in new door jam, a specific pre-made piece, add a 1x1 inch trim piece, caulk it in, and restall the weather striping. He did a passable job. We wanted to be sure the joints were flush. They were... for the most part. The door frame boards was primed already, but he covered the trim piece with caulk. "Painted" with caulk, he said, that'll seal it. Yeah, maybe.

After dinner we did a little extra work. We sanded the joined frame flush on the handle side and touched up the caulking a little bit. The hinge side was more of a problem, since we couldn't get the sander in the space. Oh, and when the handyman left, there was still no caulk behind the bottom hinge. There was before we finished with. His attention to detail does seem to be lacking a little bit. We learned that after the last work he did for us.

This morning I got up and primed the entire door frame. Four hours later, the first coat of paint, and five hours after that, a second coat of paint. We also sealed the door frame where the locks go in with an expanding foam that is supposed to be water tight. I can't imagine where this door would leak again. I've thought that before, only to have it leak again. Tomorrow morning we'll reinstall the weather stripping and cross our fingers.

We'd done all the things we were supposed to do when we hired him. We got recommendations, we checked his license, and we checked work he'd already done. The first work he did for us we were happy with. The second job, not as much. By the time this came up, we had already decided not to use him again. The only reason we did for this was because he agreed to do the work for free. He stood behind his work. I'll give him that. If he'd insisted on charging us, we would have hired someone else. Today he was next door, doing some work for our neighbor. She's been happy with him. That's OK with me. But we won't have him out again.

So now we wait for a strong southern rain. It might be next week, it might be next month. The door didn't leak every time it rained, nor every time it rain from the south. Who knows if we've got it this time. We caulked everything we could think of, short of caulking the door itself shut, or bricking the thing up entirely and putting in a window, which with our luck would leak as well. At least we caught it before it has gone any further. Or more importantly, before the carpenter ants or the termites found it. That only would have made a bad situation worse.

Maintenance is one of the many joys of home ownership. It requires constant vigilance. We'll keep our eyes on this door and in six months, leak or no leak, we'll probably caulk and paint it again.